(Closed) My Scottish Castle Wedding, full recap.

After four weeks in the UK are finally back in Colorado and I have time to upload a full recap of the day. Here’s some of the story as well:

After a pretty sleepless night my mum came to wake me up. “Time to get up it’s your wedding day!”. That’s when the butterflies in my stomach started.

The whole wedding was done on a fairly tight budget and we had poured most of it into the venue and the food, you’ll see why in the pictures, so we had arranged a taxi to take us to a local hairdresser.

Me and my wonderful maid of honour.

Me and my sis, my only other bridesmaid.

My mum then picked us up and we all headed to the castle to get ready. They provided us with a lovely room, called the Dalwolsie Lounge to get ready in. I think I was shaking with nerves by this point, but a little glass of champange helped. I was so nervous that people wouldn’t think I looked pretty, or that I would fall on all the stairs down into the chapel, or that I would mess up on the lines in the ceremony.

Some pics right before the ceremony:

Here’s my dad coming to collect us and take us to the chapel.

Here we are with the piper leading us. We had to head down from the quarterdeck to the ground floor just before heading into the chapel. In the room just before and here everyone was getting so emotional and my sister was crying so much she was almost ruining her makeup.

Coming down the aisle after surviving all the stairs you can see in the background.

Then our ceremony started. We had a humanist ceremony. It started with our officiant talking about marriage. Then we had a handfasting ceremony where ribbons are wrapped around both of your arms. You then say some words and pull your arms apart to form a knot you can keep. We then had a friend of my mum’s sing for us. She had a gorgeous voice. Ken, the officiant then told some funny stories about us and how we met. Next I got really emotional as we had prepared some secret words to read to each other. I could hardly get though mine without crying. Then, we did the traditional vows (minus the obey party, of course) and the legal vows you are required to say in front of your witnesses in Scotland. Then it was the exchange of the rings and our first kiss.

It went by so fast! The ceremony lasted about 35 mins, but I felt like I had been up there only 5. Next we had to sign the marriage schedule to make it legal.

Afterwards we headed outside with all our guests to have photos taken. Luckily the rain held off even though it was cloudy and a bit windy.

I was just so happy to be married that I forgot all about posing for nice photos. We still got good ones though, even though lots of them are of us kissing!

Then it was onto greet our guests, get some family photos and get yet more photos inside the castle.

A few more brave people went outside to get some more pics:

Then it was time for the wedding breakfast (which was a three course sit down meal), we then had speeches, and cut the cake. Shortly after that we headed back to the reception room to for our first dance. We did a combination of waltz and foxtrot steps to Elvis Presley’s “Can’t help falling in love”. Then it was time for a quick dress change for ceilidh dancing. That’s Scottish country dancing which is very energetic and quite wild with lots of foot stamping, clapping and swinging your partner around.

All that dancing had our guests really hungry, so we had an evening buffet with our wedding cake, sausage rolls, chicken drumsticks and sandwiches. There was champange for the rest of the evening and that was good as we all got pretty thirsty as we did the dancefloor again with a DJ playing this time.

Here’s some shots of the decor and details to finish off the recap:

All together it was a wonderful day. I am still shocked that it all came together so well when it was arranged over email and skype from over 4000 miles away. The castle and all our vendors went above and beyond to help us and make the day so fantastic!

That is so beautiful! We had scottish elements to our wedding (including ceilidh dancing) but DH would’ve been abolutely THRILLED if we could’ve done it in Scotland. You look so happy with your new husband, and everything is just so wonderful. Congratulations!

@AnotherMrsBrown: I love your couple photos, you look like you’re having the best time and are utterly delighted with each other!

Your dress is stunning – I love the effect of that subtle little ‘hem’ on the edge of each ruffle, I think that looks so great. That photo of you on the stairs is beautiful!

Also, LOVING the Irregular Choice shoes – I’ve been pondering a pair for myself, were they comfy? I get the impression Irregular Choice can be a bit hit-and-miss on comfort depending on what pair you get!